Groucho Marxism

Questions and answers on socialism, Marxism, and related topics

  • What next after Venezuela

    Two days ago, president Nicolas Maduro was kidnapped by US forces during a military strike on Venezuela, in a major international development. In a previous blog post I said that the US is clearly is aiming at regime change in Venezuela, and this has been now been proven correct. Not that I am claiming any particular prescience or insight; it has been obvious for some time now that the US was aiming for regime change. The timing is interesting though, as just the day before the attack Maduro had said that he was ready to make a deal with Trump. You’d think that Trump, with his love for making deals, would have jumped at the opportunity! It’s almost as though the US wanted to act before the international community realized that a deal was on the cards.

    In kidnapping Maduro the US has once again exposed itself as an imperialist power that just does whatever it wants, whenever it wants. So much for the rules-based international order! The question now is what happens next. The US probably plans to install the neoliberal Zionist Maria Corina Machado as president – assuming they have planned that far ahead. Recent experience of similar US aggression suggests they haven’t thought beyond the initial attack. It seems unlikely that the US will stop at removing Maduro though. Trump has already said that Colombia will be next in the firing line; like many people I had assumed that was an idle threat, but now I’m not so sure. Or perhaps Cuba will be next, as the US has wanted regime change there for even longer than they’ve wanted it in Venezuela.

    As expected, all the usual imperialist fascism apologists have been wheeled out by the BBC and other mainstream media outlets to give their support to the US’s actions. Elsewhere, many liberals have been expressing their amazement at these events, as if nothing like this has ever happened before. Some people really do have short memories! On the left, meanwhile, there has been widespread condemnation of this aggression, demonstrating once again that we are the only people with our heads screwed on when it comes to these matters. However, there is a difference of opinion on the left when it comes to Maduro and his government. My view is that Maduro should be condemned as a corrupt dictator, but I have seen a lot of leftists defending him over the past couple of days.

    The argument being made in favour of Maduro seems to be that a socialist leader in a country like Venezuela needs to be authoritarian to effectively stand up to US imperialism. Of course, that hasn’t really worked for Maduro in the long run as he has now been ousted, but he did manage to stave off the threat of US invasion for 13 years. Moreover, there is historical evidence that can be adduced in favour of this argument. The Bolsheviks, who led arguably the most successful socialist revolution ever, were famously authoritarian. On the other hand, the reason Salvador Allende’s socialist revolution failed in Chile was that he and his administration didn’t take a hard enough line on reactionary tendencies, particularly in the military, which allowed the US to sponsor a successful right-wing coup.

    In the end, though, the question of whether Maduro and his government should be praised or criticized is beside the point. Extraordinary rendition bypasses due process and treats sovereign nations as ‘lesser-than’. This is true regardless of whether or not the abductee is considered a dictator. If it is treated as acceptable then we could see similar coups happening elsewhere; in fact this seems quite likely, as noted above. In any case, the idea that the US was motivated to remove Maduro because he is a dictator is laughable. As if Trump and his cronies care about the well-being of the Venezuelan people! This raises the question of why the US has done this, to which the obvious answer is: oil. As I noted in my previous blog post, Venezuela has more oil reserves than any other country in the world.

    However, there are reasons to think that this is not just about oil. First, it will take a lot of investment just to get Venezuelan oil production back to pre-sanction levels. Second, Venezuelan oil is dense and viscous and requires specialized processing. Third, the US is already present in the Venezuelan supply chain via Chevron. And fourth, Venezuelan oil will not plug any immediate demand and is unlikely to significantly reduce prices. You could even go so far as to argue that oil is being used as a smokescreen, to make it seem as though this invasion was done for the benefit of the US people. So if it’s not just about oil, what else is it about? I think it is a dry run for a new type of low-cost, low-risk, and lighter footprint regime change mission that could potentially be rolled out elsewhere.

    It is meant as a message to the rest of the world: stand up to us and you will be removed. The message is for the leaders of Colombia, Cuba, and other country that has attempted to break free from the yoke of US imperialism. It is also meant as a message to the US’s adversaries, particularly China and Russia: this is our back yard, so don’t try to meddle in it. Whether or not they heed this message, only time will tell. One thing is clear though – there are turbulent times ahead.

  • Use value, exchange value, and labour value

    The labour theory of value, henceforth LTV, posits that the exchange value of a commodity is proportional to the socially necessary labour time required to produce it. In a 1993 article, the Australian economist Steve Keen launched an attack on the LTV. In this blog post I will summarize his argument. Keen begins by rightly pointing out that, although Marx was the greatest champion of the LTV, many (although not all) Marxists have since abandoned it. He also points out that Marx did not immediately adopt the LTV, but developed an acceptance of it over a period of time, in parallel to developing an understanding of the concept of use value. The concept of use value did not play a role in Marx’s early writings.

    It was only later that Marx came to understand that use value and exchange value are inseparable dialectical aspects of the commodity, which itself is central to the analysis of capitalism. He then applied this dialectic to provide an explanation of the origin of surplus value. Marx argued that the exchange-value of commodities themselves cannot be the source of surplus value, as exchange involves transfer of equivalents. It follows that the dialectical opposite of value, use value, is the only possible source of surplus value, so the source of surplus value must lie in the quantitative difference between the use value and exchange value of labor-power. However, Keen points out that this is just one source of surplus value, not necessarily the only source.

    Keen argues that Marx reached the conclusion that labour power is the only source of surplus value by contradicting basic premise; namely, that the use value and exchange value of a commodity are unrelated. Specifically, Keen argues that Marx attempted to forge an equality between the use value and exchange value of the means of production, by equating the depreciation of a machine to its productive capacity. This is equivalent to asserting that in the case of machinery and raw materials, what is consumed by the purchaser is not their use value, as with all other commodities, but their exchange value. This suggests that Marx reached the result that the means of production cannot generate surplus value by confusing depreciation with value creation.

    In practice, there is no reason why the value lost by a machine – i.e. depreciation – should be equivalent to the value added by it. Depreciation can be equated to exchange value, while a machine’s contribution to production is its use value. The use value of a machine will differ from its exchange value; and, as with labor, its use value may be significantly greater than its exchange value. Keen goes on to argue that In his algebraic explorations of value creation, Marx compounded his previous logical errors by using the same magnitude for the exchange value and the use value of the means of production, whilst using different magnitudes for the exchange value and use value of labor power. Let us go through this algebra in a bit more detail.

    The gross output of the production process is given by C+V+S, where C is ‘constant capital’ – the exchange-value of the means of production – V is ‘variable capital’ – the exchange-value of labor power –  and S is surplus value. Keen argues that Marx identifies the use value of labour power as V+S, and the use value of the means of production as C. The latter identification clearly contradicts Marx’s fundamental and oft-repeated proposition that use value and exchange value are unrelated. Keen concludes that Marx’s claim that labour power is the only possible surplus is based on this false identification of use value and exchange value. Moreover, Keen claims to have reached this conclusion by applying Marx’s own logic.

    To make this a bit more rigorous, consider an economy which produces m commodities using n types of labour. For such an economy we can define a commodity vector as an mx1 column vector with positive elements and a labour vector as an nx1 column vector with positive elements. The economy is defined by an activity set, with the interpretation that an element (X,U,X’) of this set represents a possible configuration of commodity inputs X, labour inputs U, and commodity outputs X’. We may also define a  price vector as a 1xm row vector with positive elements and a wage vector as a 1xn row vector with positive elements. The surplus value associated with activity (X,U,X’), price vector p, and wage vector w, is then given by: S = p(X’-X)-wU.

    The quantity pX’ corresponds to gross output and the quantities pX and wU correspond to constant and variable capital (see above). The profit rate is given by r = S/(C+V) = [p(X’-X)-wU]/(pX+wU); rearranging gives r(pX+wU) = p(X’-X)-wU, or pX’ = (pX+wU)(1+r). The production price vector associated with the activity (X,U,X’), wage vector w, and profit rate r, is the price vector p satisfying this equation. Production prices can be thought of exchange values expressed in monetary terms. If n = 1, so there is only one type of labour, the associated labour value vector may be defined as the vector v satisfying the equation: vX’ = (vX+U)(1+r). We then have wvX’ = (wvX+wU)(1+r), so p = wv and production prices are proportional to values.

    Thus, in the case were there is only one type of labour, we have effectively defined labour values in such a way that exchange values are proportional to them, with the constant of proportionality equal to the average wage. Under this definition, therefore, the labour theory of value holds. However, a critic might argue that this definition of labour values is contrived and chosen specifically to produce the result we want. I will return to this point in a future blog post.

  • Waking up

    A spiritual awakening is a profound shift in consciousness, moving beyond the ego to a deeper sense of self, reality, and connection. It is often triggered by life events or contemplation, leading to transformation, new perspectives, heightened awareness, compassion, and a search for deeper meaning, sometimes feeling disorienting but ultimately bringing clarity and purpose. A political awakening, on the other hand, is the process by which an individual or a group of people develops a heightened awareness of political issues, power structures, and their own place within society, leading to increased political consciousness, engagement, and activism. In this blog post, I will put forward the view that spiritual and political awakening are two sides of the same coin.

    I will start with a confession: I used to be a centrist. If you’d asked me 20 years ago what my political position was, I probably would have told you that I was centre-left. I was once firmly of the view that although all political parties are far from perfect, there is still sufficient difference between them to make it worthwhile going out and voting for the least-worst option. I had swallowed the narrative that the only way change can realistically occur is gradually, through evolution rather than revolution. In fairness to my younger self, I was a product of my upbringing (as we all are). I am of the generation that grew up during the fall of communism in Eastern Europe, which gave a lot a credibility to the idea that capitalism is the only viable system.

    I am also of the generation that grew up during the ‘great moderation’: the period roughly from the mid-1980s to 2008 characterized by remarkably stable macroeconomic condition, featuring lower volatility in output and inflation, longer economic expansions, and generally improved living standards. Up until 2008, you could make a case that capitalism, although far from perfect, creates stability and prosperity overall. That all changed with the global financial crisis, which exposed the supposed stability of capitalism as a sham and marked the beginning of my political awakening. Like many people, I was appalled when the UK government responded by introducing its austerity program, punishing ordinary people whilst simultaneously rewarding those who had caused the crisis.

    A couple of years later, I came down with a mystery illness. The symptoms were acute and included extreme fatigue, loss of sense of smell, loss of balance, shortness of breath, and partial loss of sight. Despite the acuteness of these symptoms, nobody could work out what was wrong with me. Eventually, after a year or so and many visits to my local hospital, I was diagnosed with an autoimmune condition called sarcoidosis. An autoimmune disease occurs when your immune system mistakenly attacks your own healthy cells, tissues, and organs, causing inflammation and damage. Nobody really knows what causes such illnesses to occur, but one theory is that they are caused by chronic stress. That certainly seemed to fit with my situation as at that point I had been living under chronic stress for many years.

    When I reflected on it, I realized that this stress was caused primarily by being forced to participate in capitalism. It was then that I really started to understand what a rotten system capitalism is. Being forced to work for forty plus hours per week against your will is just about bearable when you are in good health; but try doing it with as chronic illness. It was around this time that I started meditating as a way to cope with my health issues. This further increased my spiritual awakening and helped me see what was really going on around me. And what I saw was that capitalism is a perverse, unjust system based on a web of lies and illusions, which forces people to give up the best years of their lives doing activities that are at best pointless and at worse actively harmful.

    The point I want to get across here is that my political and spiritual awakenings were one and the same thing. My spiritual awakening was what enabled me to see the world clearly, which reinforced my political awakening. Conversely, my political awakening led to me wanting to understand the world on a deeper level, which reinforced my spiritual awakening. These were not two separate processes but a single process acting as a kind of iterative feedback loop. Having gone through this, I now look back on my younger self almost as a different person. I realize that I was going through life in a kind of dream (or perhaps nightmare would be more appropriate), completely oblivious to the true nature of the world around me.

    The problem with going through this awakening process is that it makes it painfully obvious when others haven’t. This can create difficulty with interpersonal relationships, which can start to seem quite superficial. You can feel yourself gradually outgrowing old friendships and patterns of socializing. Note that I am not claiming any superiority here; on the contrary, I feel I was lucky to have gone through such an awakening. As difficult as having a chronic illness was, I now realize it was an essential part of my spiritual development. But I believe that everyone is capable of spiritual and political awakening given the right circumstances. The question is what the right circumstances are. This is a question we socialists need to answer if we want to bring about a successful revolution.

  • The fragility of civilization

    A ‘magnetosphere’ is a region of space surrounding an astronomical object, such as a planet, in which charged particles are affected by that object’s magnetic field. A geomagnetic storm is a temporary disturbance of the Earth’s magnetosphere driven by interactions between it and magnetic field structures that originate from the Sun. In September 1859, the largest geomagnetic storm in recorded history occurred. This was associated with a very bright solar flare on 1st September 1859, observed and recorded independently by British astronomers Richard Carrington and Richard Hodgson. This solar flare and the resulting geomagnetic storm became known as the Carrington Event (presumably to Hodgson’s chagrin).

    The event caused extremely bright auroras in both the northern and southern hemispheres. Because of the induced current from the electromagnetic field, telegraph systems all over Europe and North America failed, in some cases giving their operators electric shocks. However, the impact of the event was relatively limited due to low prevalence of electrical technology at that time. If a similar event were to happen today, it would trigger catastrophic, widespread failures: massive power grid blackouts lasting years, GPS and satellite collapse, internet shutdown, and severe disruption to banking, transport, and healthcare. As scary as that sounds, the Carrington event pales into insignificance compared with what are known as Miyake events.

    Miyake events are named after the Japanese physicist Fusa Miyake who, as a doctoral student, was the first one to identify them and published the results with co-authors in 2012 in the journal Nature. A Miyake event is an observed sharp enhancement of the production of isotopes by cosmic rays. This occurs when a high-energy cosmic ray interacts with the nucleus of an atom, causing nucleons  – protons and neutrons – to be expelled. Miyake events are caused by solar particles and are estimated to be potentially 5 to 20 times more powerful than the 1859 Carrington event. The impact on civilization if one occurred today is difficult to imagine. And they are not as rare as you might think: Miyake events are estimated to occur roughly once every 400-2,400 years.

    What’s particularly worrying about this is that the last Miyake event occurred in 993 AD. So if we assume they occur on average every 1,000 years, we are due another one right about now. And it’s not only extreme solar events we need to worry about. In 1908, a large explosion of between 3 and 50 megatons TNT equivalent occurred near the Podkamennaya Tunguska River in Russia. The explosion was caused by the atmospheric breakup of a stony asteroid about 50–60 metres wide. The Tunguska event, as it has become known, is the largest meteoric impact event recorded history. The effects were limited due it occurring over a sparsely populated area; had it occurred just a few hours later, it would have destroyed the city of St. Petersburg.

    Admittedly, a single city being destroyed would not mean the end of human civilization. But much larger meteoric impacts are known to have occurred in the distant past – such as the Chicxulub impact in Mexico that ended the Cretaceous period and wiped out the non-avian dinosaurs. It is quite feasible that a similar impact could happen again in the not-too-distant future. Moreover, we really have no way of predicting when and where such an impact will occur next. Most people imagine that we would be able stave off a large-scale impact by breaking up a meteor with a nuclear weapon before it hit the Earth. But the truth is that we would probably only become aware that such an impact it was going to happen when it was too late to do anything about it.

    All of which goes to show that human civilization is a lot more fragile than we usually think. Our civilization might seem stable and destined to last forever, but this is an illusion. It could literally end tomorrow. In fact there is evidence that the human race has almost been wiped out in the past. A recent  (2023) paper in the journal Science suggests that sometime between 800,000 and 900,000 years ago, the population of our ancestors fell from around 100,000 to around 1,000 individuals. The bottleneck lasted for about 100,000 years and brought our ancestors close to extinction. This is congruent with a substantial chronological gap in the fossil record and accords with the lack of genetic diversity in human beings in comparison to our great ape cousins.

    Is there anything positive we can take from this? If there is a silver lining, I think it lies in the realization that our existing capitalist system won’t last forever. Of course we all know that to be true on some level, but understanding just how fragile our civilization is brings this into sharper focus. A cataclysmic astronomical event will occur at some point – and probably sooner than we think. When it does, we can only hope that something better emerges from the ashes.

  • Formalizing dialectics

    Happy new year first of all, to anyone who happens to be reading this. One of my new years’ resolutions is to make an effort to finally understand some concepts that I’ve always struggled to get my head around. I am going to start with the concept of ‘dialectics’. The term ‘dialectic’ comes from the Ancient Greek word dialektikḗ, and referred originally to a dialogue between people holding different points of view about a subject but wishing to arrive at the truth through reasoned argument. The word was given a more technical meaning by the German philosopher Georg Hegel in the early 1800s. In Hegel’s philosophy, the term takes on the specialized meaning of development by way of overcoming internal contradictions.

    In the later 1800s, Marx and Engels adapted the Hegelian dialectic method into a materialist philosophy which became known as ‘dialectical materialism’. This theory forms the basis of ‘historical materialism’, their materialist view of history. Although clearly based on Hegel’s approach, Marx claimed his own dialectic method to be the “direct opposite” of Hegel’s, which he considered too abstract and insufficiently rooted in material conditions. The class struggle between capital and labour is the primary contradiction considered as part of Marx’s dialectics because of its central role in the social and political lives of a society. Another key contradiction is that between the use value and exchange value of commodities, on which more below.

    In a recent (2023) paper, the British philosopher Graham Priest provided a formal definition of the dialectic method. Priest begins by pointing out that dialectics, in the sense of both Hegel and Marx, involves the study of dynamic processes in which contradictions arise and are ‘aufgehoben’ – an impossible word to translate into English as it means both removed and preserved. (This highlights a perennial problem that arises when translating philosophical texts from the language in which they were originally written.) The closest word we have in the English language is ‘sublation’. Priest aims to answer two questions with his approach: (1) how, exactly, do these contradictions arise? and (2) what exactly is meant by sublation?

    The dynamic processes Priest refers to are known as ‘dialectic progressions’. These be thought of as a sequence of stages, which we may label as stage 1, stage 2, stage 3, and so on. All of these stages concern a predicate: a function P() from a set X to the set {0,1}, with the interpretation that P(x) = 1 means that x has the property specified by P(), and P(x) = 1 means that it doesn’t. We start by fixing some element x in the set X. In stage 1, P(x) = 1, in stage 2, P(x) = 0, and in stage 3, P(x) = 1 and P(x) = 0; thus, stage 3 involves a contradiction. Stage 4 involves introducing a new predicate, P’(), with the property that for any x’ in the set X, P’(x’) = 1 if and only if P(x’) = 1 and P(x’) = 0. Thus, in particular, we have P’(x) = 1 and P’(x) ≠ 0.

    The predicate P’() has in a sense removed the contradiction we had in stage 3, as P’(x) no longer entails a contradiction; but it has also retained this contradiction, as it was baked into its very definition! Thus, the predicate P’() formalizes the concept of sublation (or aufgeheben). We can continue this process by fixing some element x’ in the set X (which may be equal to x). In stage 4, P’(x’) = 1, in stage 5, P’(x’) = 0, and in stage 6, P’(x’) = 1 and P’(x’) = 0; thus, stage 6 also involves a contradiction. This contradiction can be sublated again by defining a new predicate P’’(), with the property that for any x’’ in the set X, P’’(x’’) = 1 if and only if P’(x’’) = 1 and P’(x’’) = 0. The process can then be repeated again indefinitely, neatly capturing the logical relations involved a dialectic progression.

    The process is best illustrated with some examples. The first example involves the development of money. Let us take X to be the set of all commodities, and define the predicate P() by P(x) = ‘x is a use value’. Then at stage 1, P(gold) = 1, as gold is something that is used (as jewellery, etc.). At stage 2, P(gold) = 0, as gold becomes an exchange value (as people trade it). At stage 3, P(gold) = 1 and P(gold) = 0, as gold becomes both a use value and an exchange value. Now define the predicate P’() by P’(x) = ‘x is commodity money’. Then P’(gold) = 1, and at stage 4, P’(currency) = 1, as the value of currency is linked to the value of gold. At stage 5, P’(currency) = 0, as we move away from the gold standard; this is the stage we are currently at.

    The second example involves the development of capitalism. Let us take X to be the set of all labourers, and define the predicate P() by P(x) = ‘x is bound’. Fix some generic labourer x. Then at stage 1, P(x) = 1, as the labourer is bound by their feudal chains. At stage 2, P(x) = 0, as the labourer is feed from their bonds. At stage three, P(x) = 1 and P(x) = 0, as the freed labourer is forced to sell their labour-power. Now define the predicate P’() by P’(x) = ‘x is a wage labourer’. Then P’(x) = 1, which completes the first round of the progression. There is of course much more to be said about the development of capitalism, just as there is much more to be said about the example above. In particular, this model says nothing about why these progressions occur. However, I think it nicely summarizes the logical structure involved.

  • PIE velars in Albanian and Anatolian

    In a series of recent blog posts I have argued that Proto-Indo-European (PIE) had just two types of velar consonant: plain velars and labiovelars. It has been claimed that there is evidence for three distinct types of velar being preserved in Albanian and in the Luvian branch of Anatolian. The theory that three types of velar remained distinct in Albanian was first put forward by Holger Pedersen in 1900, according to whom labiovelars were palatalized before (PIE) front vowels, whereas plain velars were not. Specifically, Pedersen argued that before front vowels, there is a threefold reflex in Albanian of palatovelars, plain velars, and labiovelars, as follows: *k’ > Albanian th, *k > Albanian k/q, *kʷ > s; and *g’,*g’h > Albanian dh, *g,*gh > Albanian g/gj, *gʷ,gʷh > Albanian z.

    Pedersen’s most convincing examples of the labiovelar developments are: *penkʷe ‘five’ > pesë, *kʷiH₁ ‘how’ > si, *H₃okʷiH₁ ‘eyes’ > sy, *gʷherm- ‘heat’ > zjarm, and *kʷel- ‘turn’ > sjell. The main examples of words supposedly containing plain velars that were not palatalized by a following front vowel are: *ghedh- ‘find’ > gjej, *suerghe- ‘be ill’ > dergj, *Horghi ‘nit’ > ergjëz, *suolke- ‘pull’ > heq, *keH₁s- ‘time’ > kohë, *kel- ‘drive’ > qell, and *keid- ‘cut’ > qeth. The problem with Pedersen’s theory is that, as Lars Steensland demonstrated in 1973, plain velars do not occur before front vowels in PIE. Or, more accurately, plain velars were subsequently palatalized before front vowels in the satem languages. This suggests the unpalatalized velar must have been introduced analogically in at least some of these words.

    The unpalatalized velar in gjej ‘find’ may have been taken from the nasal variant *ghnedh- ~ *ghndh-, as palatalization was blocked before resonants in Albanian. Similarly, the unpalatalized velar in qell ‘drive’ may have been taken from the zero grade form *kl-. The unpalatalized velars in dergj ‘be ill’, heq ‘pull’ and kohë ‘time’ can be explained by noting that these words are derived from a root which originally contained an *s; as I noted in a previous blog post, there is evidence that palatalization was blocked in words containing  *s in Albanian. The supposed reflexes of *Horghi ‘nit’ cannot be regularly derived from it, so this root probably did not exist in PIE. Finally, the word qeth ‘cut’ is not probative as the underlying root is actually *kH₂eid-, so the velar never stood before a front vowel.

    The theory that the three PIE velar series remained distinct in Luvian was first put forward by Craig Melchert in 1987, who originally claimed that *k’ > Luvian z, *k > Luvian k, and *kʷ > Luvian ku. Melchert (2013) subsequently revised his claim with the assertion that *k’ > Luvian z only before front vowels, non-syllabic *u, and syllabic resonants, with *k’ > Luvian k elsewhere. To demonstrate that the three PIE velar series remained distinct in Luvian, it must therefore be shown that *k > Luvian k before front vowels, non-syllabic *u, and syllabic resonants. The main examples adduced by Melchert to support this claim are: *kes- ‘scrape’ > kišanda, *krs- ‘cut’ > karš-, and *tuke- ‘statue’ > tukedre. None of these examples holds water.

    The unpalatalized velar in kišanda ‘scrape’ may have been taken from the zero grade form of the root *ks- (contra Melchert). The unpalatalized velar in karš- ‘cut’ can be explained by noting that the underlying root was *(s)ker- with a mobile *s and positing that palatalization was blocked by the preceding *s, as it was in the satem languages. Alternatively we can note that Melchert only provides one example of *k’ > z before syllabic resonants, namely *k’rH₂- ‘horn’ > zurnid, where  the palatalization could easily have spread from the well-attested *e-grade form *k’erH₂-. Thus, the change *k’ > z before syllabic resonants is not well-established. The velar in the third word, tukedre ‘statue’, could represent an original labiovelar which was delabialized by the preceding *u.

    In conclusion, the claims that three distinct types of velar were preserved in Albanian and in the Luvian branch of Anatolian do not stand up to scrutiny. There is no evidence from these languages which disproves the hypothesis that PIE only had two types of velar constant: plain velars and labiovelars.

  • Do we really need to build more houses?

    The western world is currently facing what is commonly referred to as a ‘housing crisis’: a situation where many people can’t find safe, decent, and affordable homes. This crisis is particularly acute where I live in south-eastern England. The usual explanation for this is that there isn’t enough housing to go around. However, according to data from the Resolution Foundation, a British think tank, there is currently a total of 67 million bedrooms in England alone, easily enough for one per person and almost double the 38 million they estimate is actually required (assuming that couples can share a bedroom). This suggests that all we need to do to fix the housing crisis is to more optimally allocate existing houses among the population.

    Such a reallocation would of course be very difficult to do in practice, but not impossible. These figures clearly demonstrate that there isn’t a lack of housing in the UK; what there is a lack of is affordable housing. The reason for this is that house prices have ballooned in recent decades. Since the 1970s, UK house prices have dramatically outpaced wages, with the house price-to-income ratio more than doubling from around 3-4 in the 70s to around 8-9 currently. This increase cannot be explained by supply and demand alone. The UK population has increased since the 1970s, which has increased demand for housing; but the population has only increased by around 25% in that time, which is nowhere near the 200%-300% real terms increase in house prices.

    Moreover, the UK housing stock has also grown by approximately 40% during this period, easily outstripping the growth in population; so if anything, the real-terms price of housing should have gone down! This is one in the eye for those who wish to blame the housing crisis on immigration: the evidence for this simply doesn’t stack up. However, this also runs counter to what many people see as the obvious solution to the housing crisis – namely, building more homes. It is clear that simplistic supply and demand arguments cannot explain the surge in house prices we have seen over the past 50 years, and it follows that the problem will not be solved through solutions like building more homes or reducing immigration.

    In order to understand the true cause of the increase in house prices, we need to take a different approach. The Marxist approach to explaining prices is to invoke the labour theory of value, which says that the exchange value of commodities is proportional to the socially necessary labour time required to produce them. However that doesn’t seem to work in this case either, as there is no reason to think that the socially necessary labour time required to produce a house would have increased by 200%-300% in the past 50 years. On the contrary, it should have gone down during that period due to the introduction of labour-saving technology. A potential solution to this paradox lies in understanding that the value of a house is related not to the building itself, but to its location.

    Housing is unique in that its value appreciates rather than depreciates over time. For most other assets – machines, for example – it is the other way round. What makes housing special? Again, it is the fact that unlike other assets, the value of a house is primarily derived from its location. The reason that the value of houses tends to go up over time is that the infrastructure around them – roads, shops, schools, and so on – tends to improve. This improvement in infrastructure is of course a result of human labour. So when you buy a house, you are only in small part paying for the labour that went into building the house itself; what you are mainly paying for the labour that went into improving the surrounding area.

    Here is a famous quote that nicely sums up this idea: “Roads are made, streets are made, services are improved, electric light turns night into day, water is brought from reservoirs a hundred miles off in the mountains… Every one of those improvements is affected by the labour and cost of other people and the taxpayers. To not one of these improvements does the land monopolist contribute, and yet, by every one of them the value of his land is enhanced. He renders no service to the community, he contributes nothing to the general welfare, he contributes nothing to the process from which his own enrichment is derived… The unearned increment on the land is reaped by the land monopolist in exact proportion, not to the service, but to the disservice done.”

    The Marxist firebrand who said this was none other than one Winston Churchill, writing in 1909. This demonstrates just how far our political discourse has shifted to the right in the past 100 years. Imagine a Conservative politician saying something like that now! Or even a Labour politician for that matter. This quote points to the real reason house prices have risen so significantly: an increase in landlordism. We have seen that there is a plentiful supply of housing in the UK, but landlords artificially reduce this supply by purchasing more than their fair share of it. In this respect, landlords effectively act like ticket touts. However, whereas ticket touting is illegal in the UK, landlordism is seen as a perfectly acceptable way of making money.

    This is something that needs to change. Landlordism involves making passive income, and like any passive income, this is ultimately derived from other people’s labour. The usual rebuttal that landlords provide a service to their tenants is obviously nonsense. Landlords prevent other people from getting on the housing ladder by buying up property and making it unavailable for others to buy, and by raising the price of property to well above what most people are able to afford. The key to solving the housing crisis is getting rid of landlordism. Until we do that, the housing crisis will only get worse.

  • The true meaning of Christmas

    For billions of people around the world, the meaning of Christmas centres on the birth of Jesus. However, Jesus almost certainly wasn’t born on Christmas day. Jesus’ birthday is not stated in the gospels or in any historical sources and the evidence is too incomplete to allow for consistent dating; all that can be said with any confidence is that he was born around 6 to 4 BC. There are two main hypotheses as to why 25th December was chosen as Jesus’ ‘official’ birthday. The first is that 25th December was chosen because it was nine months after a date chosen as Jesus’ conception: 25th March. This is a clear example of circular reasoning, as 25th March was presumably chosen as the date of Jesus’ conception because it is nine months before Christmas!

    The alternative and much more sensible hypothesis is that Jesus’ birthday was chosen to coincide with the winter solstice, as 25th December was the date of the winter solstice in the Roman calendar. This highlights a truth about Christmas that many Christians don’t like to admit. Christmas has roots in pagan celebrations, particularly Roman festivals like Saturnalia and the worship of Sol Invictus (Unconquered Sun), both held in late December. It was originally a mid-winter festival designed to cheer everyone up at the time of year when the days are shortest and things seem most depressing. Christians subsequently appropriated this traditional festival by telling everyone it was a celebration of Jesus’ birthday.

    The uncertainty around Jesus’ birthday raises the question of what we actually do know about him. We know he was a real, first-century Jewish preacher from Nazareth in modern-day Palestine who gathered followers, was baptized by John the Baptist, and was executed by crucifixion under Pontius Pilate. These points have near-universal scholarly consensus and are widely understood. What is less widely acknowledged is that he was also a revolutionary! He challenged the power structures of his day – the Roman and Jewish establishment – by championing the poor and marginalized, and advocating radical love and forgiveness, subverting norms through non-violence and compassion. His teachings condemned wealth and advocated for the dispossessed, directly opposing economic injustice.

    If Jesus was alive today, we would call him a socialist. So it seems rather paradoxical that Christianity has become associated with the conservative right, particularly in the US. But perhaps this isn’t so surprising as conservative right-wing movements have a long history of appropriating socialism, in name at least. It is well-known, for example, that ‘Nazi’ is shorthand for ‘national socialist’. I would argue that many if not most self-designated ‘socialist’ states are really right-wing authoritarian regimes who claim to be socialist as a way to create legitimacy with the general population. Right-wing movements appropriate the term ‘socialism’ for the same reason that Christianity appropriated Christmas: because, just like Christmas, socialism is popular with the general public.

    This claim – that socialism is popular with the general public – runs counter to the mainstream mantra that ‘socialism is unpopular’. It also seems to be contradicted by the fact that socialist parties rarely do well in elections, at least not in western countries. But that is because these elections in these countries are organized, run, and effectively rigged by the ruling class, with the help of their media-political lackeys. Socialism is popular with ordinary people as it involves giving them democratic power and improving their material conditions. The problem is that many are unaware of what socialism is and equate it with totalitarianism. This is partly a result of propaganda and partly a result of self-designated ‘socialist’ states not really being socialist at all (as noted above).

    In more recent times, capitalism has appropriated Christmas through increased commercialization. Christmas has effectively become a tool for indoctrinating young people into the capitalist mindset, by creating a link between happiness and consumerism. As a socialist I completely agree with those who say we need to get back to the true meaning of Christmas; but I disagree with most on what that true meaning is. In my view, Christmas is not about Christianity any more than it is about consumerism. It is an ancient festival designed to bring people together and create a sense of community. If people do want to make Christmas about celebrating the birth of Jesus, they should bear in mind that Jesus was a socialist who would have been appalled by the right-wing views of many so-called ‘Christians’ today.

  • It’s time to ditch the royals

    Things are not going well for Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, the pedophile formerly known as ‘Prince’. Every time you think his reputation couldn’t possibly sink any lower, yet another revelation about his past comes to light. The latest batch of documents from the Epstein files includes emails that will damage his reputation even further – assuming that is even possible at this point. These latest documents highlight the need to investigate further Mountbatten-Windsor’s links to Jeffrey Epstein and his circle, and to force him to give evidence to the US Department of Justice. As a committed anti-royalist I can’t help but feel a certain amount of schadenfreude when contemplating Mountbatten-Windsor’s demise. Apart from anything else, it highlights just how incredibly stupid the man is.

    “Have you found me some new inappropriate friends?” someone called “A in Balmoral” asks in an email Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s friend and companion who is now serving a 20-year prison sentence in the US for sex trafficking. I wonder who “A in Balmoral” could possibly be?! He really covered his tracks brilliantly there didn’t he. Perhaps he was originally going to go with “Andrew in B” but thought it was too obvious. At other points he refers to himself as the “Invisible Man”. Yeah, that should really throw them off the scent Andrew. This isn’t just stupidity; it’s a toxic mix of stupidity and arrogance. Mountbatten-Windsor clearly thinks he is cleverer than everyone else and can easily fool people with these pathetic aliases.

    As enjoyable as it is to witness the downfall of this disgusting, pompous man, there is also a serious point to be made here which nobody seems to be making. It is only by an accident of history that Andrew is not our head of state. If his older siblings Charles and Anne had died before they were able to have any children, Andrew would have been next in line to the throne. This once again highlights the fundamental problem with a hereditary head of state: there is no way of ensuring that they are fit for office. As someone once said, a hereditary head of state makes about as much sense as a hereditary dentist. Nevertheless, there are many who try to justify the continued existence of the royal family on the basis that they don’t really have any power, arguing that their role is purely ceremonial. But is this really true?

    The short answer is: no. The royal family wields immense power in the UK; but this isn’t obvious as their power is exercised in a subtle, ‘soft’ way. There are several routes by which this is achieved. The most obvious is the private weekly meetings that the head of the royal family – currently ‘King’ Charles – has with the Prime Minister. We the public are assured that the monarch remains ‘politically neutral’ in this meetings, but this is obviously nonsense as nobody in the world is politically neutral. We all have natural political biases, and it is not hard to imagine in which direction the head of the royal family’s political biases would lean. In any case, there is no way for us to verify what goes on in these meetings as they are private, which in itself should ring alarm bells.

    Another method by which Charles wields power is through his infamous ‘black spider’ memos: letters and memorandums written by Charles to British government ministers and politicians over several years. Apologists for the royals claim that these memos are “harmless”, but that’s beside the point, which is that Charles clearly has the power to meddle in public affairs if he wants to. But the main way the royals exert their grip over the British people is through a subtle kind of propaganda. Wherever you go and whatever you do in the UK, you will see or hear the royal family being referenced: on money, stamps, the names of our armed services, the names of government departments, the names of tube lines, and so on. Not to mention the insipid ‘King’s Speech’, broadcast to every British home on Christmas day.

    All of this is done to create the illusion that the royals are an essential component of everyday British life. We scoff when we see images of North Korea with the ubiquitous pictures of Kim Jong-Il and Kim Il-Sung in the background, and wonder aloud how can the people who live there can possibly be so gullible as to give their unwavering support to these obvious mediocrities. The reason, we understand, is that the North Korean people have been brainwashed from an early age into believing that the Kim dynasty represents some sort of super-human family that is destined to rule over their country. Little do people realize that exactly the same dynamic is going on in the UK; the only difference is that here, the brainwashing is less overt.

    Ultimately, the royals have power over us ordinary people because they represent the ruling class, which has a monopoly on power. They are essentially the personification of this class. All the furore about Andrew’s appalling behaviour will not fundamentally change anything as long as existing power structures remain in place. Ask a royalist why we should retain the monarchy and the first thing they will probably say is that it creates stability and continuity. I think this is precisely the reason we need to get rid of it.

  • Is the universe superdeterministic?

    The American physicist Richard Feynman once famously remarked: “If you think you understand quantum mechanics, you don’t understand quantum mechanics.” The point Feynman was making is that quantum mechanics is strange, weird, counter-intuitive, and that some questions about it cannot or should not be asked. However, this strangeness disappears if we are willing to accept that one of the assumptions that is usually made about quantum mechanics is not realized in nature. This assumption is known as ‘statistical independence’. Loosely speaking, statistical independence means that spatially separated systems can be considered uncorrelated, so removing this assumption means that they will be correlated, even in absence of a common past cause.

    Statistical independence is an assumption that we make about nature which works well to describe our observations on the macroscopic ‘classical’ level; however, that doesn’t necessarily means it holds on the microscopic ‘quantum’ level. In quantum mechanics, statistical independence can be expressed as a lack of correlation between the ‘hidden variables’ of the theory and the detector settings of an experiment. The hidden variables represent all the information that is required to predict the outcome of an experiment for the detector settings. These variables are referred to as ‘hidden’ because they do not explicitly appear in the equations of quantum mechanics. Removing the statistical independence assumption means that the outcome of an experiment will depend on the detector settings.

    The theory that emerges on the removal of the statistical dependence assumption is known as ‘superdeterminism’, as it suggests the evolution of the entire universe, including our measurement choices, is completely predetermined and correlated. It implies that everything in the universe is connected with everything else. Superdeterminism is often considered a ‘conspiracy’ in which the detector settings of an experiment are influenced by hidden variables in just the right way to give the results of quantum mechanics. But this objection is based on the schoolboy error of confusing correlation with causation. All superdeterminism assumes is that the hidden variables and detector settings are correlated; it doesn’t assumes anything about the direction of causality.

    Another objection people make about superdeterminism is that it implies we have no free will, as it suggests that the choices experimenters make about what to measure are not truly independent but are predetermined and correlated with the particles being measured. But as I outlined in a previous blog post, free will is an illusion; and not only that, it is completely incoherent as a concept. I therefore take the lack of free will under superdeterminism as a reason to support rather than reject the theory. However, the main argument in support of superdeterminism is that it neatly sidesteps a well-known problem in the interpretation of quantum mechanics. This problem is encapsulated by what is known as ‘Bell’s theorem’, named after the Irish physicist John Stewart Bell.

    Bell’s theorem says that under the assumption of statistical independence, either realism or locality must be violated. Which is to say that either particles don’t have definite properties before measurement (realism is violated) or influences can travel faster than light (locality is violated), or both. The theorem has its roots in the famous Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen thought experiment proposed by physicists Albert Einstein, Boris Podolsky, and Nathan Rosen in a 1935 paper. Their paper suggested that quantum mechanics is incomplete because it allows for ‘spooky action at a distance’: instantaneous correlation between entangled particles, seemingly violating locality. They argued that to avoid this violation of locality, there must be some hidden variables that aren’t accounted for by the theory.

    Bell showed in 1964 that under the assumption of statistical independence, introducing hidden variables will not solve the problem of non-locality. In the words of Bell: “If [a hidden-variable theory] is local it will not agree with quantum mechanics, and if it agrees with quantum mechanics it will not be local.” But Bell’s theorem is predicated on the assumption of statistical independence; remove that assumption and the theorem no longer holds. In other words, removing the statistical independence assumption means that there might be hidden-variable theories that do not violate locality and agree with quantum mechanics. These hidden variables encapsulate definite properties of a particle, so both realism and locality are saved.

    I am far from an expert in quantum mechanics so my opinion on this carries little weight. For what it’s worth, though, I think superdeterminism has a lot going for it. As already noted, it reinforces the truism that we lack free will. It also suggests that everything in the universe is connected, which nicely counters the bogus Western philosophical idea that human beings are atomic decision-making agents interacting with an external world. In this sense it has a lot more in common with Eastern philosophy. But the main reason I like superdeterminism is that it starts with what we know from experimental data must true (quantum mechanics, realism, and locality) and then asks which of our assumptions must be incorrect in order to allow these things to be true simultaneously.

    Unfortunately, all too often we human beings do things the other way around. There seems to be something inherent to human nature that when faced with evidence that contradicts our prior assumptions, rather than re-examine our assumptions, our first reaction is to reject the evidence! Even quantum physicists, arguably the most intelligent members of our species, are guilty of this it seems. Academics are perhaps even more guilty of this than the general population, having often staked their careers on their prior assumptions being correct. This explains why so many academic disciplines end up going down blind alleys (mainstream economics being the most egregious example). If we are to have any hope of understanding the world around us, we have to start by looking at the evidence.

  • Why are we being prepared for war?

    The UK and other European nations are currently being urged to prepare for potential conflict with Russia. In a recent speech, NATO chief Mark Rutte said that Russia could attack a NATO country in the next five years. According to Rutte, “Russia is already escalating its covert campaign against our societies,” and we “must be prepared for the scale of war our grandparents or great-grandparents endured.” The problem with these statements is that they are impossible for the layperson to verify, so Rutte is essentially asking for us to take his word for it. It is tempting to invoke Hitchens’ razor – ‘that which is asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence’ – and simply dismiss Rutte’s claims. But let’s be generous and examine whether there is anything behind them.

    Rutte would probably argue that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is evidence that it is willing to attack other nations. It is conceivable that once Putin is finished in Ukraine, he may turn his sights to other nations that have significant Russian minorities – particularly Latvia and Estonia, whose populations are over 20% ethnically Russian. These nations were of course once part of the USSR, the dissolution of which was famously described by Putin as a the “greatest geopolitical catastrophe.” And Putin is not alone; most Russians view the Soviet Union’s dissolution with regret. According to the Wilson centre, a US-based think tank dedicated to research and policy discussions on global issues, many Russians believe the Soviet era was Russia’s best historical period, offering prosperity and opportunity.

    This nostalgia for the Soviet Union amongst Russians flies in the face of the standard Western narrative that capitalism is a superior system to socialism. But what do people in other former Soviet republics think? Something that isn’t often talked about in the west is that a referendum on the future of the Soviet Union was held in 1991, in which people from different republics were asked to vote on whether they wanted to keep the union together. The vote was boycotted by the authorities of in Armenia, Estonia, Georgia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Moldova, but turnout was over 80% across the rest of the Soviet Union. In every republic where people were allowed to vote – Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, Azerbaijan, and the central Asian republics – they voted overwhelmingly in favour of preserving the union.

    All the republics that boycotted the vote organized their own referendums, and in each of these people voted overwhelmingly in favour of leaving the Soviet Union. So it seems pretty safe to say that the people of Armenia, Estonia, Georgia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Moldova do not want to go back to being part of a union ruled by Moscow. This highlights a qualitative difference between these states on the one hand and Ukraine on the other. Whereas the former have long histories that are independent of Russian rule, the histories of Ukraine and Russia have always been intertwined. It is well-known that Kyiv, the capital of Ukraine, used to be the capital of an East Slavic state named Kievan Rus’ which is considered the precursor of modern-day Russia.

    I am not in any way trying to justify Putin’s invasion of Ukraine here. The point is that just because Putin invaded Ukraine, it does not necessarily follow that he will seek to invade other former Soviet states – and it definitely doesn’t follow that he will seek to invade other European nations. So it seems there is little evidence to back up Rutte’s assertion. At this point we make invoke another principle popularized by the American physicist Carl Sagan: ‘extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.’ Rutte’s claim that we must be prepared for the scale of war our grandparents or great-grandparents endured is certainly extraordinary, but the evidence for it certainly isn’t, so it can be legitimately dismissed.

    Why, then, are we being prepared for war? I can think of a few reasons. The first reason is to create a distraction. Things are not going well in Europe at the moment; the cost of living crisis is really beginning to bite, and people are looking for explanations as to why their lives are getting worse. It is helpful for the ruling class in Europe to create bogeyman on which to blame all of the continent’s problems as it distracts from the real problem – namely, the neoliberal capitalist system we are all being forced to live under. The second reason is to do with Europe’s increasing irrelevance on the global stage. The ruling elite of Europe thinks that if it can convince people they under imminent threat of war, they will be more willing to allow their governments to rearm, which will in turn grant them more power.

    The third reason relates to the role and relevance of NATO. It seems pretty clear that the eastward expansion of NATO was the trigger that led to Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. Again, I am not in any way justifying the invasion, the responsibility for which clearly sits primarily with Russia. But NATO must be held responsible too, as if it hadn’t expanded eastwards the invasion would never have happened. If people realized that NATO had largely manufactured this situation itself, they would be a lot less likely to support the alliance. It is in NATO’s interest to exaggerate the Russian threat as that justifies both its eastward expansion and its continued existence. This is probably the key reason for Rutte’s bellicose outburst.

    Unfortunately, Rutte’s statement has been unquestioningly parroted across the mainstream media, to the extent that many people across Europe probably believe that war with Russia is imminent. I suspect NATO’s strategy is to keep making this prediction until it eventually becomes self-fulfilling. It is important therefore that we on the left counteract NATO’s narrative and call out this dangerous warmongering nonsense, before it’s too late.

  • The true source of our insecurity

    I recently went through a rather unpleasant experience at work. I had applied for a professional qualification and as part of the application process was invited to what was labelled a ‘career discussion’. The point of this, I was told, was to go through my career history with a member of the relevant professional body so that they could make an assessment of whether my skills and experience were sufficient for them to award me the qualification. Fine, I thought; might even be quite nice to talk a bit about my career. After all, everyone loves talking about themselves don’t they! It was made clear to me that this was definitely not an interview and that I therefore didn’t need to prepare anything prior to the meeting.

    So I was somewhat taken aback when instead of a nice, calm discussion about my career history, I was subjected to an interrogation which lasted well over an hour. The meeting started badly when I was a minute late due to the inevitable IT issues (the meeting was held virtually, as most meetings are now). My attempt to clear the air by making a jokey comment about this went down like a lead balloon, and things only went downhill from there. For the next 80 minutes I was subjected to a series of increasingly aggressive questions about what I had achieved in my career, with each answer I attempted being met with a derisory comment or put-down. I could feel my self-confidence ebbing away. Things got so awkward that I was tempted to terminate the ‘discussion’ halfway through.

    As you can imagine, I came out of the meeting feeling like a failure. A few days later the results came back; needless to say, I wasn’t awarded the qualification. Not only that, I had been marked at a graduate level for around half of the competencies, despite the fact that I have 20 years of professional experience. No further feedback was provided of course. By this point, however, the shock of the meeting had subsided and I had started to get things into perspective. One advantage of having 20 years professional experience is that you learn a few things. And one of the things I have learned is that if somebody unfairly criticizes you like this, it is almost always coming from a place of insecurity. Applying this principle to my current situation, I suddenly saw it in a much clearer light.

    The reason I was given such a hard time, I realized, was not because my assessor thought I was incompetent; it was because deep down they believe themselves to be incompetent, and were subconsciously projecting their perceived incompetency on to me. For example, at one point my assessor made a mistake about something then chided me for not making it clear in my application. But when I looked at it my application again after the discussion, I saw that I had made it perfectly clear. The mistake was a result of my assessor not reading my application properly. Of course they knew this really, and blaming me was their way of subconsciously deflecting the blame away from themselves. My discussion had been littered with examples such as this.

    I began to realize that my entire career has been littered with similar examples. There is a profound irony here: the more competent you are at your job, the more you make others feel incompetent, and the more likely they are to then try to undermine you and bring you down to their level. This undermining isn’t done consciously, at least not usually; it mostly happens subconsciously. It is important to recognize this dynamic, for two reasons. First, it provides an explanation for why you can often come in for criticism from others even when (or especially when) you are perfectly good at your job. And second, it highlights just how insecure some people can be. Once you understand that, you immediately flip from disliking the people who unfairly criticize you to feeling sorry for them.

    Why are we humans so insecure? Is it just a part of our genetic makeup? If it is then there must be an evolutionary explanation for it, but I struggle to think what that could be. If anything, I would have thought that being secure in yourself would confer an evolutionary advantage. One explanation is that this insecurity stems from our natural competitiveness: when coming into contact with others we naturally size ourselves up against them, and if we feel we are falling short then that makes us feel insecure. This explanation ties in with the right-wing view that human beings naturally compete with each other in a kind of evolutionary survival of the fittest. But I think this explanation gets things backwards.

    In my view, the idea that human beings naturally compete with each other stems from a fundamental misunderstanding of evolutionary biology. It is true that competition takes place on the micro-level of the gene, but it doesn’t follow that competition also takes place on the macro-level of the human being. This is an example of the so-called ‘fallacy of composition’: the logical error whereby people wrongly assume that what’s true for the individual parts of something must also be true for the whole. It has been demonstrated time and again that micro-level competition between genes often leads to cooperative behaviour at the macro-level of organisms. We all know this well enough from observing human interactions in our everyday lives, the vast majority of which are cooperative.

    I think our insecurities ultimately stem from the system we are all forced to live under – namely, capitalism. It is a system which creates insecurity by maintaining a constant threat of unemployment and poverty for the majority of the population. It is also a system which forces us all to compete with each other, usually against our subconscious will, which reinforces this feeling of insecurity. The only way for us to rid ourselves of our insecurities is to replace capitalism with a system which discourages competition and encourages cooperation.

  • Indo-European word-medial velars

    In a previous blog post I argued that Proto-Indo-European (PIE) had two types of velar in word-initial position: plain velars and labiovelars. In the satem languages, labiovelars were delabialized and plain velars were palatalized apart from after *s, and before *r, *s, and *H₂; palatalization was also blocked before *l in Albanian and *lo in Balto-Slavic. In the centum languages, labiovelars were delabialized before *u, and labiovelars were also delabialized before *o and before consonants in the western languages. This raises the question whether the two-velar hypothesis holds in word-medial position too. This is a more difficult question to answer, as there are more environments word-medially that need to be considered.

    In his 1973 PhD thesis, Lars Steensland showed that in word-medial position, palatovelars occur everywhere apart from after non-syllabic *n; plain velars occur everywhere apart from after *e and syllabic *n; and labiovelars only occur after *e, *i, *o, and *n. Steensland also showed that only plain velars occur in words beginning with *st, whereas only palatovelars and plain velars occur word occur in words beginning with *m. This includes all of his examples of words with a plain velar after *i, and most of his examples of words with a plain velar after *o. The obvious explanation is that PIE had just plain velars and labiovelars in word-medial position, and the latter were delabialized in the Centum languages apart from after *e, *i, *o, and *n, and in words beginning with *m.

    The problem with this explanation is that it implies that the labiovelar developments happened independently in all of the centum languages. However, a closer look at the data suggests we do not need to assume this. Let’s start with the position after *H₂. Steensland provides three examples of words with a plain velar in this position, two of which are derived from the root *bheH₂g- ‘share’. The plain velar in these words is reconstructed on the basis of Greek reflexes meaning ‘to eat’, with a semantic shift ‘I received a share’ > ‘I consumed’ > ‘I ate’, which seems rather tenuous. The third word, *knH₂kos ‘safflower’, is clearly related in some way to the word reconstructed as *knH₂onks ‘honey’, where the plain velar would have been blocked from palatalizing after the non-syllabic *n.

    Steensland demonstrated that labiovelars do not occur after *u in PIE, but both palatovelars and plain velars do occur in this position. This is consistent with the two-velar hypothesis if we assume that plain velars were palatalized in this position in the satem languages and labiovelars delabialized in this position in the centum languages, which is plausible. There are two examples of words with a plain velar after *r: *H₂uergeti ‘turn’, and *(s)morkos ‘decayed’. The plain velar in the former may have been blocked from palatalizing in the nasal variant *(H₂)urengeti, whereas latter word is highly doubtful and may therefore be disregarded. Thus, we need not assume that labiovelars were delabialized after *r in the centum languages either.

    There is one example of a word with a plain velar occurring after *l: *uolkos ‘wet’. As this word only has reflexes in the western languages, it may have originally contained a labiovelar which was subsequently delabialized before the *o. There are five examples of words with a plain velar which begin with *m: *moghtis ‘might’, *muktis ‘freedom’, *(s)morkos ‘decayed’, and *H₃mighleH₂ ‘mist’. As the first word only has reflexes in the western languages, it may have originally contained a labiovelar which was subsequently delabialized before the consonant. Similarly, the second word may have originally contained a labiovelar which was subsequently delabialized after the *u. The third word may be disregarded, as noted above.

    The plain velar in the fourth word, *H₃mighleH₂ ‘mist’, is more difficult to explain. The word is derived from the root *H₃meigh- ‘drizzle’, which must surely be related to the root *H₃meig’h- ‘urinate’. We may hypothesise that they are in fact the same root, and that palatalization was blocked in descendents of the former but not the latter. As *H₃mighleH₂ is the only reconstructable word derived from the first root, we can posit that palatalization was blocked before the following *l. This works fine for the Albanian reflex, as palatalization was blocked before *l in Albanian. To explain the Indo-Iranian and Balto-Slavic reflexes, we must assume that palatalization was blocked before *leH₂ (> *laH₂) in these languages; this is rather ad-hoc, but aligns with palatalization being blocked before *lo in Balto-Slavic.

    Thus, except for the position after *u, there is no evidence that labiovelars were delabialized word-medially in the centum languages, other than in the positions in which they were delabialized word-initially. We are not quite finished yet though, as there are still a few words with plain velars occurring in word-medial position that require an explanation. The first is *tuekos ‘body’, which is reconstructed as *tuakos by Steensland, but the *a is based on a Greek reflex which is probably unrelated. We may posit that this word originally contained a labiovelar which was subsequently delabialized in the zero grade; this zero grade is attested in Anatolian, the only centum branch in which this root is found.

    The plain velar in *H₂uogseieti ‘enlarge’ probably represents an original labiovelar which was delabialized by the following *s, as the word only has reflexes in Germanic among the centum languages; alternatively, it may have been delabialized in derivatives of the root variant *H₂eugʷ-. On the other hand, the plain velar in *uogsos ‘wax’ probably represents an original plain velar which was blocked from palatalizing after *s in the metathesized form *uosgos from which the Balto-Slavic reflexes are derived. That just leaves one word with an unexplained plain velar: *loghos ‘lair’. The Greek reflex of this word precludes an original labiovelar, which makes accounting for the lack of palatalization in the Slavic and Albanian reflexes difficult.

    The absence of a palatalized reflex in the Slavic can be explained by a rule set out by Antoine Meillet in 1924 which states that in Slavic, palatalization was blocked in words containing *s. Two of the words used by Meillet to reach this conclusion – *g’heH₂ns ‘goose’ and *k’oseH₂ ‘hair’ – also have unpalatalized velar reflexes in Albanian, suggesting that the same rule operated in that language as well. If so then we have accounted for all the data, which demonstrates that the two-velar hypothesis holds in word-medial position too.